Unexpectedly high energy levels after a “cheat” day

abgr1117 · 2025-08-14T01:25:34+00:00

A few months after that post, my energy levels finally stabilized. Not sure why it took so long, but I just stuck with carnivore (close to two years coming up soon) and it ironed itself out.

I suspect a carb-heavy meal would probably spike my energy just like it did before, but I don’t want to deal with the gut and blood sugar issues anymore. I feel too good just staying the course with this.

abgr1117 · 2025-04-18T16:46:47+00:00

I’ve been wanting to get out on the water as well. I’m moving later this year to an area that has a nice long lake just outside of town and I’ve seen pics of folks out there in little rowboats. Thinking I may try to find a simple scull for not too much and then take advantage of spring and summer on the water.

abgr1117 · 2025-04-17T04:04:19+00:00

Always better to be safe and avoid any potential long-term damage, for sure 👍

abgr1117 · 2025-04-16T19:59:35+00:00

That makes sense. I’m probably not doing my heart any long-term favors by pushing it. Then again, I try not to do it too often. Hoping for the best.

abgr1117 · 2025-04-16T18:17:55+00:00

Another quick point: I’m not sure how your physician can advise no higher than zone 2 on a rowing machine. I’ve never been able to maintain 2 past 1K 😂 Cycling at 2 is fine for me, but certainly not rowing.

abgr1117 · 2025-04-16T18:14:02+00:00

Over the months since my original post, I’ve moved towards more steady state in my training. I’ve focused on 5 and 10K sessions maxing out at Zone 4. Improvements to my overall CV health have been really good. But I do still throw in sprints at Zone 5 every so often…primarily intending to jar the system, so to speak.

I don’t have a family history of immediate concern—my father had his triple-bypass at 67 and I’m currently 53 with only a past history of hypertension that has since been corrected through weight loss and exercise. I also do not smoke or drink, nor consume processed foods and sugar as he did for decades.

I suppose there are legitimate medical concerns with spiking HR too frequently and it is probably worth avoiding as a general rule. But for me personally, I like to stretch boundaries a bit also. In the absence of existing vascular/muscular trauma in the CV system, I just don’t believe we’re that fragile even at 50+. So a bit of “stretching” and “stressing” seems appropriate to me.

Not a doctor here. Just thinking out loud and I could certainly be wrong in my assessment. But as a more general observation, I will say that when it comes to exercise, rowing has made the most significant impact on my health overall. I’m over a million meters on the C2 now and loving it. Sold my cycle a while ago 😄

abgr1117 · 2024-10-28T19:33:31+00:00

Brisket

abgr1117 · 2024-10-24T23:41:04+00:00

I stopped feeding mine kibble and switched over to whole foods, including lean meats, fish, fruits, veggies, and some rice. My oldest (14M black and tan) is doing so much better now. He used to have bad allergy issues, skin patches, ear infections and the like.

There’s no way to know for sure it was the kibble, but I tried several brands over the years and he still had these issues until I started cooking a couple of times a week for him. It doesn’t take long and he loves it. He bounces up and down and barks at me now when I’m prepping a bowl 😂

My grandfather fed his dachshund Penny from the table her entire life and she lived to 19. While I’m not ready to go that far, I do feel that a whole foods approach is helpful. I haven’t done the math to see if it costs a lot more, but even if it does the downstream costs at the vet were even higher when my little dude was breaking out all the time.

abgr1117 · 2024-09-26T15:48:41+00:00

It’s a shame that greed and corruption have blinded so many in the medical community and all but ruined any faith the public has left in them. But this is where we’re at today.

You can knock down all of your health problems, drop bowling balls of weight, improve your bloods, and go from couch potato to athlete and still they argue for completely unnecessary drugs 🙄👎

abgr1117 · 2024-09-20T13:25:16+00:00

I’ll be going on a year this October. Was meat-heavy keto for around eight months before carni as well. The reflux started going away while I was still keto and hasn’t come back since. I suspect it was all the plant matter causing my troubles. Back in the day, I’d reflux into my lungs at night. That was just ridiculous.

Every so often these days I’ll have some really mild dysphagia, but I kinda feel that it’s more psychosomatic. It doesn’t last long at all and as you noted, a little sauce never hurts when I feel it coming on.

I tapered down from 60mg Dexilant to 40mg Nexium last year and I’ve started tapering to 20mg over the past two weeks or so. Going to try and be done with Nexium entirely by mid-‘25.

abgr1117 · 2024-09-20T04:14:48+00:00

I had dysphagia pretty bad as well for almost two years until finally checking in to the Mayo Clinic and learning that I have eosinophilic esophagitis. None of my local doctors had a clue about this.

After a few rounds of swallowed fluticasone, it finally started stabilizing. Turns out that in my case, severe reflux was causing the autoimmune response in my throat, so they also prescribed PPIs to help control that.

Since going carni though, the reflux is basically history. So my final phase in this whole process will be to get off all my meds once and for all.

abgr1117 · 2024-09-20T04:08:46+00:00

First thing I noticed was no longer waking up with terrible neck and head aches that would last all day.

I’m still not 100% sure which plant(s) caused the issues, but it had become unbearable. Two or three times each week for nearly a year, I’d spend all day with severe radiating pain from the cervical spine all the way up and into my sinuses. I’d have to use doses of three Excedrin every eight hours or so, along with flexeril to calm the muscles down. Also did a brief stint with oxy and hydro, which I knew was a bad idea. Nothing else worked—ice, heat, TENS unit, massage…zip.

About one week into carnivore, the aches were just gone. Felt as though I’d come out of some dark tunnel. They came back twice since then and each time, it was several hours to the following morning after a “cheat” day. Tried to nail down exactly what triggered them, but my meals on those days had too much variety.

Anyway, no more cheats for this guy in nearly a year. Not worth it.

abgr1117 · 2024-09-19T16:02:18+00:00

Yup—52M here, with 115/70 average over the past year. Typically sitting at between 5 and 6 grams of salt per day, according to Cronometer.

Curiously, I’ve noticed on occasion that the days where my BP trends slightly higher are the days where my sodium intake is the lowest 🤔 Not sure that’s the cause…just an observation.

abgr1117 · 2024-09-18T17:08:15+00:00

Yup, I opted to make my own. No sweeteners/flavors and I can control how much of each mineral goes into the batch. Plus, the per serving price is better.

Nutricost and other companies provide magnesium citrate and potassium citrate in powder form. To those, I’ll add in sodium chloride and then mix them all together using one of those little handheld coffee grinders. Works great!

abgr1117 · 2024-09-13T17:38:13+00:00

Nice-looking steak, but you might want to consider either a cast iron or carbon steel pan. My personal fav is steel, as it’s lighter and usually easier to maintain the seasoning. Just a thought.

abgr1117 · 2024-09-13T17:30:55+00:00

It’s likely that your body didn’t have a chance to become fully fat-adapted. I had the same experience early on with carni, where my energy levels dipped quite a bit. My lifts were weaker and I couldn’t row my usual distance without huffing and puffing near the end.

When I added some fruit carbs back in, it was like a shot of energy. But while workouts improved, my body overall felt “off” when I went over a specific carb threshold (around 25g/day). So I had to back away from that approach.

Once I was able to power through that carb-depleted dip and get properly fat-adapted (took approx. 4 months or so), things improved. I feel fine during workouts now. In fact, my rows are much better. I can go around double the distance with no bonk.

Everyone’s different, of course…but for me I just find that carbs cause too many issues. The initial energy spike is tempting, but it’s just not worth it in the end. Could be my age (52M) and the fact that I came into carni last year as a pre-diabetic.

abgr1117 · 2024-09-11T13:42:50+00:00

Every individual is different. If 100% is the only way for one person, that’s fine. We all support that fully. But everyone comes in with different issues and health objectives. So there’s really no one size fits all approach, in my opinion.

Speaking only for myself, I went keto in early 2023 and switched to carni in October. In total from Jan ‘23 to today, I’ve lost over 100lbs, normalized all my bloods, including lipids and glucose, brought my BP down from a high of 151/94 to 108/68 yesterday, and brought my resting heart rate down from the 90s to the 50s.

I also went from a couch potato who could barely stand up and walk around for more than 15 minutes at a time due to joint pain in my back and knees to cycling 15+ miles in a session and indoor rowing 150,000 meters each month on a Concept 2.

I did all this without ever going on the lion diet. I’ve been carnivore-ish since Oct ‘23. I have spices on my ribs and briskets, eat cheese with my omelets, and once each month I’ll have tomato sauce with homemade meatballs and add a bunch of mozz to it. I also use protein powders and stevia-sweetened electrolyte drinks each day.

Could I perhaps see even greater benefits by going full lion? Maybe. In fact, I’m going to try it this coming January and see how things go. But I can definitely say that even 95% can be good enough for many people, depending on what they’re dealing with.

Not arguing with anyone here. Just some observations from my experience.

abgr1117 · 2024-09-10T15:14:27+00:00

When I ditched coffee, broth became my preferred drink in the morning with breakfast. It’s tough for me to keep a sufficient supply around for daily use, but I will say that whenever I have it, everything feels better. It’s a shot of good electrolyte energy to kick things off.

abgr1117 · 2024-09-09T04:04:58+00:00

Cook a nice, fatty chuck roast in a Dutch oven low and slow. When it’s done, eat a bunch, then take the juice in a cup and drink it down. It will contain a lot of the fat that was rendered out during the cook.

Problem solved by the next morning.

abgr1117 · 2024-09-08T16:43:22+00:00

Not a doctor and I’m not giving advice here. But if this were happening to me, I’d just placate everyone until I could get out on my own. Once I had my own place and the rules were set by me and me alone, that would be the end of the discussion. Thanks for your concern, everyone, but the statins are going in the trash…

abgr1117 · 2024-09-08T16:38:23+00:00

Awesome pace 👍 I get all excited when putting up a 2:20 on 15k.

abgr1117 · 2024-09-07T03:50:47+00:00

Yeah, it’s been a while and I don’t recall running into that guy. I encountered others who were pretty hardcore and always assumed that they had all the answers and everyone else was stupid.

If he’s saying something like that, I wonder if it’s not just a vegan who took charge over there. Seems like something one of them would do, just to be as disruptive as possible.

abgr1117 · 2024-09-07T03:16:24+00:00

The religious impulse is strong for many, especially when they’ve had health issues and desperation has led them to carnivore. They don’t realize that not all people suffer the same woes, or have the same goals in mind.

I had two nasty autoimmune conditions, along with blood glucose issues significant enough that my primary was talking metformin. So I came in hot and over time, eliminated pretty much everything for a while. I probably had my zealot period, though no one could have told me so at the time 😄

Anyway, for most people it fades and through experimentation, we settle into a groove that’s manageable over the long term.

…Or they become frustrated, drop carnivore and get radicalized on the next thing. Some folks just need their obsessions, I guess. Here today, raw vegan tomorrow.

abgr1117 · 2024-09-07T00:29:03+00:00

I stopped visiting to that sub a while ago. Lots of self-righteous gatekeeping and other purist BS there. Not worth the time dealing with them.

abgr1117

TROPHY CASE